Modifier Letter High Tone Bar

It marks the high level on a relative five-step pitch scale. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a shared set of symbols for recording speech sounds; this tone letter adds pitch information. The 2026 IPA symbol list places ˦ between mid ˧ and extra-high ˥.

The IPA archive identifies its 1926 chart as the first to include tone marks. In 1930, linguist Yuen Ren Chao proposed the five-step bar system to show pitch curves in writing and make them easier to print. Chao's original five-step scale called level 4 (˦) “half-high” and level 5 (˥) “high”; the 2026 IPA symbol list labels them “high” and “extra-high.” His examples cover English intonation (the melody of speech), Cantonese, and Lhasa Tibetan. The same tone-letter family appears in detailed transcriptions of African and other languages. In Chao's design, pitch curves and their values sat on opposite sides of a reference line.

How do tone letters trace pitch?

They show pitch moving across a syllable or phrase. Put tone letters in sequence to show a rise or fall; they record pitch movement rather than add speech sounds. ˦ contributes its high pitch point wherever it appears.

Some fonts join a sequence into one contour; others display each bar separately. The characters remain in order even when the joined shape looks like one mark.